


This Side of Paradise

by Itgoeson



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9476465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itgoeson/pseuds/Itgoeson
Summary: A short drabble wherein Erwin and Levi love each other, Levi is a little shit, and sometimes you take what you can get.(Because, really, we all need something happy these days.)





	

They’re at a ball, a banquet, a bloody waste of their time. They’re here looking for money to keep fighting Titans, here to keep the people who turn up their noses and still side-eye them, wanting to see just what makes Levi Humanity’s Strongest and Erwin the one person rumored to be able to – 

\- To what? Levi thinks. Tame him, maybe. Point him in the right direction and unleash him, like a rabid animal.

Erwin scrapes and bows a few feet away, kisses hands and asses, smiles like he never does when he’s truly relaxed. 

And Levi. All Levi can think about is that, with all the blood on his hands, he has never killed as many people as these assholes. He has killed men and women like these, felt blood-steam wisp off his skin as another Titan fell, has held the sick and dying in the Underground.

And he will never be responsible for so much death as these people. 

They move like they’ve never had to fight to live. They laugh like they don’t know their champagne cost month’s worth of work, like they couldn’t buy medicine for hundreds of people with their shoes alone. 

He thinks about what would happen if he grabbed the glass the woman next to him was holding. If he ripped it out of her hands, smashed it on her head, used the jagged stem to slash at the man that had been hovering close all night. Took the knife from the table just behind him and started cutting. Would the world be any better off? Would he hate himself more than he does now for even thinking about this?

He could take everyone in the room alone, he thinks. They’d panic. Run to the doors screaming. The guards would stream in, struggle through the swirling mass. A couple civilians might try to fight him. No more than twenty of them, plus the shoddily trained thirty-something guards. He’s taken on Titans and the epidemic that razed the Underground years ago.

Erwin wouldn’t let him get hurt, though. Levi is grateful for that, at least. Should he ever snap, Erwin would be there to stop him. Erwin would run interference, kill anyone that came at Levi too directly. He’d also likely stop him, given the chance. Erwin hates death, would be furious over their lack of funding. 

(Because Erwin is barely human at times, cold-blooded and single-minded, but he is eminently Levi’s. When Erwin was just a squad leader he’d practiced smiling. Levi had seen him do it, had seen him rearrange his features a hundred times in the mirror until he found just the right face, then practice it more until it looked natural.

Levi doesn’t trust Erwin’s face. He knows better.

Levi had practiced showing nothing. He had come to the Survey Corps dead eyed already, but seeing people eaten was something he’d never expected. Erwin watched him learn to stop shaking, control his tells, had been the sole recipient of the three times Levi had yelled in the past decade.

Erwin doesn’t trust Levi’s face. He knows that Levi is Humanity’s Strongest because he feels.)

Erwin is talking to a woman, nodding and smiling as a man cuts into the conversation. He nods along. Glances over at Levi, who saunters over, finally paying attention to the conversation around him. He won’t kill anyone today, although Erwin will probably think it’s an amusing story on the way back to base.

“No, but surely there is a Mrs. Smith . . .?” The woman, tall and sturdy in the way only the well-fed can be, trails off, clearly fishing.

Levi is immeasurably unsurprised that Erwin caught his eye just now. 

“Humanity, perhaps,” he replies. Levi mentally congratulates him on being a suave motherfucker, for all that he’s got the same emotional intelligence as pig shit.

He slips into the small circle and takes the glass Erwin snags off a passing waiter for him. 

“This is Captain Ackerman,” he tells them, smiling. Levi nods to Erwin, then stares, refusing to blink until the circle – four, now, not including himself and Erwin – have looked back to his Commander. 

They’d made a deal: one night fundraising with minimal insults and Levi would get new cleaning supplies from the money they’d raised. Soldiers had to make due with the little they’re given, Levi supposed. Besides, Erwin hated to ask.

Everyone in the Corps knew how Levi felt about these people. 

 

~~~

 

Three hours and one jiggly, furious man later Erwin and Levi shuffle into their carriage. Erwin disgustingly is sober for all that he’d drunk, while Levi had taken a sip out of three glasses each before putting them on nearby tables. 

Next to him, Ewrin shifts and cocks his head. 

“Was I wrong?”

Levi stares at him. 

Erwin exhales harshly through his nose, the closest thing he had to a laugh most days, like he can hear Levi’s internal I can’t read your goddamned mind, Eyebrows.

Come to think of it, a telepathic Erwin would make more sense than it didn’t.

“I don’t have anyone.”

He says it like a challenge. He says it like he. Well, a bit like he cares.

Levi turns in the seat, twisted sideways, to look him in the eyes. “You are married to humanity, you pervert. I’ve seen the boner you get when you talk about freedom.”

Erwin rolls his eyes, and Levi almost smiles. Lets his eyes crinkle a bit in positive reinforcement. Erwin allows himself few emotional displays. 

“Humanity aside. My parents are dead. I was an only child. If I have any other family I don’t know them.”

Levi files that away. He’d assumed, but hadn’t known for sure. 

He also thinks, painful as it is – is the Corps not its own kind of family?

“Hange. Mike. Eren,” he tacks on. “So might as well add Armin and Mikasa.”

Erwin gives him a measuring look. “And you?”

“Hardly worth debating, dipshit. Don’t fish for compliments.”

“I do love being insulted by subordinates,” Erwin drawls. His shoulders are loosening, spine bending softly. The way he looks when it’s just the two of them – just Levi, Erwin, and the terrible finality of these walls above them like gravestone markers. 

So Levi gives him another weakness. He lets Erwin keep looking at him, doesn’t try to redirect the conversation. Gives Erwin his ears and sympathy. 

Erwin takes his time, staring at him, backlit by the moon. Levi lets him. It is the closest ot peace they know. Finally – “Us. Are we something?”

He says it gently enough to take Levi aback.

“We’re something.”

It almost makes Erwin smile. His face twists, caught between fondness and sadness. Levi hates it. He nods. “Something is good.”

And that’s that. 

That should have been that.

 

~~~

 

Three weeks later, Hange is celebrating.

Levi would ask but he can’t bring himself to care. 

The recruits and younger Corpsmen are shifting around her, grabbing for beer whenever the pitcher is in reach. Fortifying themselves, maybe. Hange hasn’t stopped talking in half an hour.

Maybe that’s why Levi is still there. Mike took refuge next to him in the corner when they first got here, which meant they were getting into the hard liquer.

Fucking Mike and his fucking nose and his fucking face whenever he had to smell too much of it at once.

So Levi won’t ask what Hange has found out until tomorrow when they meet in Erwin’s office. When he can speak without slurring. 

Jean gets up, stumbling. Levi watches as he flails into Mikasa. She pushes him upright silently, while Armin’s eyes grow large, darting to Eren. Levi tries to keep from snorting as he gets up and nods to Mike.

He takes Jean’s arm before the inevitable shoving can start and pushes him out the door. The chilly air and rustling breeze are a relief after the stale sweat-and-humid smell of the tavern. Jean keeps stumbling now and then, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. Levi keeps his eyes on the streets, scanning. 

By the time they make it to the barracks, Jean has grabbed Levi’s arm four times without being shoved off. He looks slightly dazed to be in Levi’s presence without dying.

Good, Levi thinks. He’d hate to get soft.

Jean wavers in the hallway as Levi grabs a glass of water for him.

“Uh. Sir? Why –“

Levi leans close, herding him to his bunk. “No one will ever believe you,” he tells him.

And then steals his pillow while Jean’s trying to tug off his boots. The brat couldn’t have it all. 

He’s halfway to Erwin’s room, pillow still in hand, before he realizes it. And then, well. He is already halfway. Levi taps on the door, unwilling to walk in unannounced.  
There’s a confused moan, like Erwin made it to bed and – even more miraculously – to sleep before false dawn. Levi takes it for permission.

He shuts the door more firmly than he means to and hovers. Everything is just a bit too fuzzy. There’s a reason he shouldn’t be here, he thinks.

But Erwin is right there, and there’s still the pillow in Levi’s hands that’s probably coveren in Jean-drool and whatever the hell else the kids get on them these days. He drops it, disgruntled, then shucks his boots with only small hops and one almost-fall. 

Erwin is sitting upright, now, eyebrows furrowed. He has lovely eyebrows. Levi is sure he would be even more intimidating if he had Erwin’s eyebrows. 

The bed looks so soft though. He can wait to be intimidating. Levi struggles out of the 3DMG straps, laying the whole mess over a chair with minimal tangles, and shucks his pants.

Nodding, he pushes Erwin down and collapses on top of him.

“Um?” Erwin hums. Not pushing him off, just humming in his chest, not willing to push too hard. Levi appreciates that. Appreciates how comfy Erwin is under him.

“You’re not as uncomfortable as you look,” Levi mumbles before sinking into unconsciousness. 

Erwin only stays up another hour trying to figure out how he didn’t see this coming.

(In the morning, neither of them mention it. Neither of them discusses the fact that Levi never sleeps in his own room again afterwards, either. It's always been enough for them.)


End file.
